My original point was that Ryan wants to get rid of Medicare. Your response was that Obama wanted to cut Medicare. So, among other things, I pointed out that Ryan isn't on any better footing because, even as the Romney/Ryan campaign criticizes Obama for those cuts, they've adopted those very cuts in their own plan... and then taken them much, much further.
I feel like every time I've responded to you here I've had to carry on two simultaneous conversations - the one I thought we were having and the one where you move off on a new and different tangent.
"Medicare as we know it" is a system which provides health care to seniors through a government-run plan. A very popular and successful plan which has drastically reduced the poverty rate amongst our seniors. The ACA made some back-end changes to it, but preserves the seniors' user experience. They still get their same plan, still get their same benefits.
The Ryan plan is to scrap that entirely. No more benefits from the government. No more publicly backed guarantee. Instead, you get a coupon, which may or may not be enough to get you anything, and good luck to you being dumped back into the private market. Medicare is gone.
That's the difference.
As for our debt - blame Republicans for that. The major contributing factors are the unfunded Bush tax cuts, the unfunded wars, the unfunded Medicare Part D, the unfunded expansions on military and defense spending (aside from the wars), and the economic downturn which was in part caused by deregulation and lack of oversight. But at least, thanks to the stimulus (the effects of which on our deficit are tiny compared to the Bush tax cuts), we're on the road to recovery. Or were, until Republicans refused to extend measures like unemployment benefits. Still, we're in far better shape than Europe, which chose the opposite path of austerity.
So yeah. We have some tough decisions to make. We need to increase revenue by letting the tax cuts expire, cut spending on defense (even the Pentagon says that, but Congress is afraid to look soft to their constituents, and the contracts to build expensive weapons go to large companies with well-funded lobbyists), and encourage more long-term growth by investing in our sadly-neglected infrastructure (creating jobs and getting money moving in the process).
Medicare isn't the problem. And you can't blame it for the flaws in our system which should have been fixed, if only Republicans hadn't held the ACA and other provisions back through unprecedented levels of obstructionism.
And please, when you're going off on a tangent, don't put words in my mouth.
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My original point was that Ryan wants to get rid of Medicare. Your response was that Obama wanted to cut Medicare. So, among other things, I pointed out that Ryan isn't on any better footing because, even as the Romney/Ryan campaign criticizes Obama for those cuts, they've adopted those very cuts in their own plan... and then taken them much, much further.
I feel like every time I've responded to you here I've had to carry on two simultaneous conversations - the one I thought we were having and the one where you move off on a new and different tangent.
"Medicare as we know it" is a system which provides health care to seniors through a government-run plan. A very popular and successful plan which has drastically reduced the poverty rate amongst our seniors. The ACA made some back-end changes to it, but preserves the seniors' user experience. They still get their same plan, still get their same benefits.
The Ryan plan is to scrap that entirely. No more benefits from the government. No more publicly backed guarantee. Instead, you get a coupon, which may or may not be enough to get you anything, and good luck to you being dumped back into the private market. Medicare is gone.
That's the difference.
As for our debt - blame Republicans for that. The major contributing factors are the unfunded Bush tax cuts, the unfunded wars, the unfunded Medicare Part D, the unfunded expansions on military and defense spending (aside from the wars), and the economic downturn which was in part caused by deregulation and lack of oversight. But at least, thanks to the stimulus (the effects of which on our deficit are tiny compared to the Bush tax cuts), we're on the road to recovery. Or were, until Republicans refused to extend measures like unemployment benefits. Still, we're in far better shape than Europe, which chose the opposite path of austerity.
So yeah. We have some tough decisions to make. We need to increase revenue by letting the tax cuts expire, cut spending on defense (even the Pentagon says that, but Congress is afraid to look soft to their constituents, and the contracts to build expensive weapons go to large companies with well-funded lobbyists), and encourage more long-term growth by investing in our sadly-neglected infrastructure (creating jobs and getting money moving in the process).
Medicare isn't the problem. And you can't blame it for the flaws in our system which should have been fixed, if only Republicans hadn't held the ACA and other provisions back through unprecedented levels of obstructionism.
And please, when you're going off on a tangent, don't put words in my mouth.